1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a charged particle dose simulation device which performs a simulation on the dose distribution of a charged particle beam in an irradiation target when irradiating a charged particle beam, such as a proton beam, onto the irradiation target, a charged particle beam irradiation device, a charged particle dose simulation method, and a charged particle beam irradiation method.
2. Description of the Related Art
A proton therapy apparatus is known which irradiates a charged particle beam, such as a proton beam, to treat a tumor. In this tumor therapy, it is necessary to draw up an irradiation plan of an absolute dose, a dose distribution, an irradiation position, and the like depending on the shape or position of a tumor and to irradiate the charged particle beam with good precision in accordance with the irradiation plan. In drawing up the irradiation plan, the irradiation conditions of a proton beam or the like are input to a simulation device mounted in the proton therapy apparatus or the like to calculate a dose distribution in advance, and a simulation is performed as to whether or not a proton beam is accurately irradiated onto a tumor on the basis of the dose distribution. As the method of calculating the dose distribution, for example, a method, called Monte Carlo simulation or pencil beam algorithm (PBA), is known (see the related art).